Badass Page 23
Another time, Hathcock and his spotter pinned down an entire North Vietnamese Army (NVA) rifle company—well over a hundred men—in the middle of an open valley for five straight days. Five freaking days! Hiding in a concealed perch on the side of a rolling hill, Hathcock waited and dished out head shots while his spotter sat there and yelled things like, “Killing spree!” “He’s on fire!” and “Is it the shoes?” On two separate occasions the NVA soldiers attempted to escape under cover of darkness, but both times Hathcock inflicted so many kills that they were forced to run and cower behind a two-foot-high mound of dirt. Eventually, when all of the unit’s commanders had been killed and Hathcock got bored of groin-shotting fools in the nards, he allowed them to flee to a nearby abandoned village. Then he obliterated the village by radioing in and having the entire site dusted with napalm.
Working alone, planning his own missions, and patrolling deep in the unforgiving jungle, Carlos Hathcock terrorized NVA soldiers, killed their leaders, and unsettled the enemy worse than a bank teller wearing a ski mask in the middle of July. During one of his mad sniper rampages, he set the record for the longest kill shot in history, popping a dude’s head off from 2,500 yards out with a jury-rigged .50-caliber machine gun fitted with an 8x scope. Honestly, I’m not sure whether it’s more interesting that he made such an incredible shot or that they actually keep records for that sort of thing.
Hathcock’s reputation for being a completely nails hardass also earned him the opportunity to go on some of the most critically important and ludicrously dangerous missions his commanders could think up. One night he was airlifted deep behind enemy lines, where he traveled five kilometers undetected through absolute pitch darkness and set up an ambush for a French interrogator working with the NVA. This dude was like a supersadistic Commie-Nazi pinko hippie Fascist pie-hating terrorist pedophile en route to kick some puppies and ruthlessly torture a couple of captured American pilots, so Hathcock put a bullet in that dumbass’s left ventricle from five hundred yards out and sprinted back to the landing zone while being shot at by more assault rifles than the Texas State Gun Show. Another time, Hathcock spent four days crawling undetected, Solid Snake-style, through a wide open field toward a heavily defended fortress compound deep behind enemy lines. Once he got within range, Hathcock assassinated a high-ranking NVA general with a single pull of the trigger, then avoided frantic enemy patrols and made it back to American lines safely. Did I mention that this guy was crazy?
Well, Charlie certainly thought so—Carlos became so infamous that Ho Chi Minh put a bounty out on “Long Tra’ng”—the American devil known only to the Vietnamese as “White Feather.” At a time when most NVA bounties were in the $5-$8 range, the price on Hathcock’s head was five figures. The North Vietnamese even trained an entire sniper platoon for the express purpose of hunting this guy down like a dog. Hathcock heard about this unit, tracked them down, and killed the unit’s commander by shooting him through the scope of his rifle, instant-messaging a bullet directly into the dude’s eye socket and then ganking the busted scope as a war trophy.
Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock recorded eighty kills in six months, with a total of ninety-three confirmed during his career—though the actual (albeit unofficial) number is believed to be somewhere in the range of three hundred to four hundred. He went on to provide dozens of aspiring Marine snipers with some serious on-the-job battlefield training, molding them into an efficient fighting force, and personally commanding the Marine sniper platoon in combat. His men notched seventy-two kills in the month of July 1969 alone and were one of the only platoon-sized units in history to receive the highly prestigious Presidential Unit Citation from the commander in chief.
But being a marauding, belligerent, stone-cold sniper isn’t the only reason why Carlos Hathcock was a badass dude. One day, while he was heading out to a dangerous mission to assassinate a giant Marineeating gorilla, the armored vehicle Hathcock was riding in drove over an antitank mine and promptly exploded all over the place. Things were blowing up everywhere, the entire truck was engulfed in flames, and everyone and everything was basically on fire. Well, instead of keeling over and succumbing to complete immolation of his entire body like a wuss, Carlos Hathcock pulled himself up, mustered what little strength he had left, and somehow dragged six unconscious Marines out of the fiery wreckage. The inferno left 40 percent of his body covered by second- and third-degree burns, and Hathcock required thirteen skin grafts to repair his horrific injuries, but all six Marines survived.
In case there was any doubt as to how tough this man was, just five months after almost becoming a human-sized lump of charcoal Carlos Hathcock was back out on the gun range coaching the Marine Corps Rifle Team for an upcoming competition. In 1977, he helped establish the USMC Sniper School, developed the curriculum, and trained the first class of Marine snipers to go out into the bush and tear the enemies of democracy some new bungholes. Hathcock retired after nearly twenty years in the service, his ballsy reputation as an unerring sharpshooter so firmly cemented in Marine Corps mythos that the USMC’s highest award for marksmanship is now named after him. Appropriately, Hathcock spent the later, quieter years of his life hunting one of the few things on this earth deadlier than humans—he spent his weekends fishing for gigantic three-hundred-pound man-eating lemon sharks in the choppy waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Anything less life-threatening would have been too boring.
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Over the course of a thousand yards, a bullet’s trajectory is dramatically affected by factors such as wind and gravity. While the exact numbers vary from weapon to weapon and bullet to bullet, in order to hit a target a thousand yards away in a 10 mph left-to-right crosswind, you would generally need to aim for a spot roughly twenty-five feet above your target and seven feet to the left.
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BADASS MARINES
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WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THE ENEMY FOR SOME TIME NOW. WE’VE FINALLY FOUND HIM. WE’RE SURROUNDED. THAT SIMPLIFIES OUR PROBLEM OF GETTING TO THESE PEOPLE AND KILLING THEM.
—CHESTY PULLER
DAN DALY
A permanently pissed, rawhide-gnawing Marine’s Marine, Sergeant Dan Daly won the Congressional Medal of Honor twice—once for single-handedly defending the American Embassy in Beijing from a throng of armed peasants during China’s Boxer Rebellion with nothing more than a machine gun and his combat knife, and once for leading thirty-five Marines to victory against more than four hundred ambushing militia troops in Haiti. Despite all of that, he’s probably best known for his brave actions during the Battle of Belleau Wood in World War I. When his platoon was pinned down by heavy German machine gun fire, Daly stood up in full view of his men and angrily yelled, “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” before charging balls-out toward the enemy positions. His inspired Marines overran the entrenched German positions and carried the day.
LOU DIAMOND
A hardass veteran of World War I, “Mr. Leatherneck” was a fifty-two-year-old master sergeant when he hit the beaches of Guadalcanal in 1942. One of the toughest and most colorful men the Corps ever produced, as well as a deadly marksman with an 81 mm mortar, legend has it that he once single-handedly destroyed an offshore Japanese cruiser by dropping a round down its smokestack from several hundred yards away. Lou was famous for his long white beard, his complete disregard for USMC dress code, and his standing orders—every morning, without exception, one of his privates was to go down to the beach, pick up a case of beer from the quartermaster, and bring it to Lou. Actor Lou Diamond Phillips is named after this guy, which is pretty cool as well.
GREGORY BOYINGTON
A champion collegiate wrestler who, like Hathcock, was once reprimanded for face-punching his commanding officer in a barroom brawl, “Pappy” Boyington was the Corps’s top fighter ace in World War II. He destroyed twenty-eight Japanese fighters, first as a member of the Flying Tigers, and later as the commander of the famous Black Sheep Squadr
on. Eventually shot down while leading a combat patrol over enemy territory, Boyington spent twenty months in harsh captivity before returning to the States and personally receiving the Medal of Honor that had already (incorrectly) been issued to him posthumously.
PETER JULIEN ORTIZ
A former reconnaissance officer in the French Foreign Legion, Ortiz enlisted in the Corps after escaping from a Nazi prison camp in 1940. He immediately parachuted into France, where he helped coordinate the French Resistance and rescue downed Allied pilots. One time, he was hanging out in a French nightclub and heard a bunch of Nazi officers talking smack about the Marines. Ortiz went into the club’s bathroom, changed into his USMC dress uniform, walked up to the officers’ table, unholstered his pistol, and ordered them to drink a toast to President Roosevelt and the United States Marine Corps. They did.
CHESTY PULLER
In thirty-seven years of service to the Corps, Lewis B. Puller rose through the ranks from private to general and won the Navy Cross five times—more than any other Marine or sailor in history. He fought well-armed rebels in Haiti and Nicaragua, commandeered a U.S. Navy destroyer during Guadalcanal (despite having absolutely no authority to do so) and used it to rescue a group of stranded Marines from an overrun beachhead, and led the epic USMC breakout from the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. He earned a reputation as a ten-gallon hardass who tolerated nothing less than ultimate badassitude from his men and offered nothing more than a giant boot up the ass to anybody who stood in his way. To this day, Marines in basic training at Parris Island end their day by shouting, “Good night, Chesty Puller, wherever you are!”
JOHN RIPLEY
Captain Ripley was an advisor to a small, underequipped garrison in South Vietnam when he heard a report that a massive column consisting of thirty thousand soldiers and two hundred tanks was converging on his position. Ripley sprang into action. He ran to the bridge at Dong Ha—the only crossing point over the Cam Lo River for miles—hooked himself to the underside of the structure, and began single-handedly laying explosives. Pulling himself along, hand over hand, while NVA soldiers fired AK-47s at him, Ripley set several explosive charges and blew the bridge up before the column could cross. Then he called down artillery on the traffic jam his demolitions had created.
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39
BRUCE LEE
(1940–1973)
If I were to be completely realistic in my films, you would call me a violent, bloody man. I would simply destroy my opponent by tearing his guts out. I wouldn’t do it so artistically.
IT SEEMS LIKE YOU CAN’T BUY A CHEESEBURGER IN A UNIVERSITY STUDENT UNION WITHOUT TRIPPING AND BEEFING IT FACE-FIRST INTO A CRAPPY, MAKESHIFT STOREFRONT WHERE SOME OLD EX-HIPPIE IS HOCKING OVERPRICED BLACKLIGHT POSTERS OF BRUCE LEE. While I’m not exactly against blacklight posters (or ex-hippies, for that matter), it’s still a little ridiculous that a man like Lee, who was once widely regarded as the pinnacle of human skill and physical conditioning, is now relegated to the same overcommercialized fate that has Che Guevara twirling in his grave like a cordless drill cranked up to maximum torque.
Of course, the current belief that Bruce Lee is pretty much the most badass human being to have ever lived certainly has a solid foundation in fact. Not only was this guy a pioneer who single-handedly brought face-smashing martial arts films to relevance in the United States and served as the idol of pretty much every Chinese kung fu action star since the 1970s, but he also was a throat-crushing brawler who dedicated his life to honing his body into the ultimate killing machine.
Born in the Hour of the Dragon (7 a.m.-9 a.m.) in the Year of the Dragon (1940), Bruce Lee was a natural actor (and, apparently, dragon). He appeared in his first film at three months old, and had been in almost twenty movies by his eighteenth birthday. Growing up on the mean streets of Hong Kong, Bruce Lee studied Wing Chun kung fu, joined a street gang called the Tigers of Junction Street, got into a bunch of no-holds-barred back-alley street fights, and beat up anyone who screwed with him. Interestingly, he and some chick won the 1958 all–Hong Kong cha-cha dance competition as well, representing the ultimate duality of Bruce’s badassery. He also won the 1957 Hong Kong boxing championship, defeating a three-time champion, taking three consecutive boxers down with first-round knockouts, and making the toughest fighters in China look like a bunch of Glass Joes, Don Flamencos, and King Hippos.
After proving that he rocked the pants off Hong Kong in every possible way, Bruce moved to the United States and started making a name for himself here. He quickly became well known for his legendary feats of awesomeness—the most famous of which was the almost-mythical one-inch punch. Basically, Bruce Lee would make a fist and put it 2.54 centimeters from your midsection, and then he would generate so much velocity in that small span that he could punch a hole directly through your torso and rip out your still-beating heart. If he was feeling particularly generous, he would spare you the vicious internal dismemberment and would just send you flying across the room, planting you ass-first into a chair strategically positioned six feet behind you.
Of course, Bruce didn’t locate some crazy Ring of Strength and magically acquire the power to tear a hole in the space-time continuum with his bare hands; generating twenty-seven tons of force by moving his fist the length of his pinky finger was something that he developed through rigorous training and discipline. The dude routinely busted out sets of 50 one-armed chin-ups, did dozens of push-ups using just the thumb and forefinger of one hand, could break boards ten inches thick with a single kick, and was known to be able to throw a three-inch-thick board into the air, kick it in midflight, and split it in half. He toughened up his knuckles by punching rock-hard heavy bags filled with gravel or metal shavings, and then when he was done working the bag for the day he emptied the contents into a bowl, added a little whole milk, and ate it with a spoon. Then he ate the spoon.
Bruce also had a supersecret technique known as the unstoppable punch, a move he demonstrated at the 1967 International Karate Tournament in Long Beach, California. First, he stood about six feet away from world karate champion Vic Moore, a dude who had won the tournament the year before by completely dismantling the greatest martial artists in the world (except of course for Bruce, who didn’t participate in these things because the sparring wasn’t full contact and he wasn’t interested in any “pussy fighting” that didn’t involve pulling out a guy’s spinal column through his urethra). Bruce said something to the effect of “Okay, I’m going to punch you in the face. Don’t let me.” Then he glided across the floor, covering six feet in about two-tenths of a second, and before anybody knew what the hell was going on Bruce Lee was holding his fist about half an inch away from Vic Moore’s face. Moore demanded a second opportunity to block the unstoppable punch. Bruce Lee gave him seven chances. Every attempt provided the same results.
But what good is an arsenal of totally flipping sweet moves if you can’t back it up in an actual battle? Well, when you’re Bruce Lee you get a lot of opportunities to show people how massive your balls are. One time, some dude named Wong Jak Man got all worked up because Bruce was teaching kung fu to non-Asians, so he challenged him to a fight. Bruce defeated the dude (who allegedly turned and ran away after getting his ass seriously handed to him by a flurry of rock-hard fists) but was ultimately disappointed with his performance, simply because ruthlessly pummeling this guy for three minutes straight left him slightly out of breath. Bruce looked on this overwhelming physical victory as a moral defeat and rededicated himself to relentless training and practice. Wong eventually recovered from this crotch punch to his ego to train guys who compete on the Ultimate Fighting Championship circuit.
One of Bruce’s most famous street fights came on the set of Enter the Dragon in 1973, when some wannabe thug poser decided he was going to try to expose Lee as a fraud. This guy was huge and jacked, and started hurling endless multitudes of vicious “your momma” jokes at Bruce until the movie star could take it no longer. According t
o some of the guys on the set who witnessed the fight, Bruce dodged an oafish attempt at a haymaker punch, slammed the dude up against a wall, swept the leg Cobra Kai–style, shoved his knee in the kid’s neck, and busted him ruthlessly in the face and head until the guy tapped out and cried like a bitch.
What Bruce Lee is probably most famous for, however, is his unparalleled contribution to martial arts cinema. In addition to breaking pretty much every single box office record in Hong Kong and single-handedly bringing about the rise of kung fu movies in the United States, he’s also famous for face-kicking a dude with a bear claw attached to his hand and introducing the world to such over-the-top action movie heroes as Black Belt Jones and Chuck Norris. He also rejected all that wacky, high-flying wire-fu stuff, instead preferring to portray his fights as straight-up, no-frills martial arts death matches between two guys actively seeking to pummel one another so hard that they throw a clot in their brains and forget how to tie their shoelaces. I respect this.
Bruce was pretty much innovative in everything he did. In addition to teaching kung fu to notable hardasses such as Steve McQueen, Bruce also developed a fighting system known as Jeet Kune Do, or “the Way of the Intercepting Fist.” Basically, this martial art is known as the “style of no style,” meaning that the fighter needs to constantly adapt his tactics to fit the situation and not constrain himself to any individual style. JKD has grown to be an incredibly popular martial art, well known for its badassitude, which is probably why pretty much every poser on the Internet claims to be a master of it.